Cyber Corpse 2
Exquisite Corpse - A Journal of Letters and Life
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The Real Y2K Nightmare
by Art Hilgart

In January 2000, the Red Army, exasperated by continued unpaid wages, the insult to patriotism of the dissolution of the USSR, and the chaos of the Russian economy, deposed the Yeltsin government, and recalled Gorbachev and Primakov as figureheads in a new Communist regime, which proceeded to re-socialize public property, crush the mafia, and demand return of the billions stashed abroad by the capitalist oligarchs. Bill Clinton and Tony Blair, wishing to save the fortunes and powers of the oligarchs, began bombing Moscow, calling the attacks a NATO exercise to protect democracy and the free market and to destroy Bolshevism once and for all.

When the world was distracted by these events, Israel sent Jews in motor homes to settle in every town on the West Bank, thus removing them from inclusion in a possible Palestinian state. (Tel Aviv had been secretly buying thousands of specially armored mobile homes from a factory in Indiana for this purpose.) In the United States, crackpots from the Aryan Nation, the Michigan Militia, and the Priests of Phineas then took to the highways with grenade launchers, and proceeded to incinerate hundreds of families traveling in recreational vehicles.

Most of the trial lawyers in America joined in a class action suit on behalf of millions of RV owners against the entire automobile and RV industries, for manufacturing unsafe vehicles. All fifty states declared martial law and began rounding up loonies. Because the courts were gridlocked by these actions, local police everywhere began arresting any black male between fifteen and thirty, keeping them in concentration camps until their spurious "war on drugs" cases could be brought to trial.

Alan Greenspan, reacting to the large increase in military spending and fearing the inflationary potential of huge deficits in the federal budget, raised interest rates to twenty per cent. The construction industry came to an abrupt halt, and ripple effects caused U. S. unemployment to jump to twenty-five per cent, which led to increased membership in the Aryan Nation, the Michigan Militia, and the Priests of Phineas.

The American press, from Rush Limbaugh to NPR, supported the NATO attacks, although some Democrats urged Clinton to avoid killing civilians, if possible, and the Republicans called the action "too little and too late." Academic papers urging more high-tech training as the corrective to unemployment proliferated, along with others exploring possible reasons for the extraordinary increase in apparent drug use by young African American males. The Wall Street Journal opined that public funding of parochial schools would restore lost moral values and bring discipline and order among the millions of new homeless families, while the American Psychiatric and Psychological Associations saw an increased need for unlimited public funding of mental health therapy.

Russia responded to the NATO attacks by firing nuclear missiles. Although none of the defective weapons reached the U. S., several exploded in arctic glaciers, causing an abrupt increase in fresh water in the Atlantic ocean. This diverted the Gulf Stream hundreds of miles to the south, initiating a European ice age, and the radioactive water killed most of the fish.

The sudden onset of cold exhausted European fuel supplies and the sharply increased price of oil strained governments and bankrupted thousands of businesses, while the loss of edible fish and poor harvests created widespread food shortages and hunger. The chaos and privation produced a religious revival, and many called for a new Crusade, to pacify God by retaking the Holy Land for Christianity and to solve the economic crisis by restoring European control of Middle Eastern oil reserves.

And that is the end of the news. Further details are lost in the historical mist of the Second Dark Ages.

ahilgart@kzoo.edu

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